shipping container house

We recently started following the development of a cool new project taking root at Clemson University in South Carolina. Architecture faculty Martha Skinner and Doug Hecker and Landscape Architecture faculty Pernille Christensen are working with their students to design livable, sustainable dwellings using the large shipping containers sent to Caribbean nations.

According to assistant professor Caitlyn Dyckman, the containers are generally considered waste because it’s more expensive to bring them back to port than to leave them in the Caribbean. But the right redesign approach could turn these large vessels into viable housing.

“Our goal for the initial start up phase of the project is to come up with a design that, like the ISO container, can navigate the many different scenarios — Haiti, Dominica, Jamaica etc. — in the Caribbean, and at the same time be “open” enough to take root and adapt so that families can take ownership of the dwelling to meet their needs but within their means,” says Hecker.

Full Story: WorldChanging

See also: Shipping container home kit.